There is an ongoing dialogue referring to the bewildering lack of planning to deal with Hurricane Katrina in the BBC London topic in this Forum, but I'm starting a new thread here with this report by Malik Rahim Malik Rahim, written on Sept 1 but still very relevant and revealing. Thanks to Peter Culshaw for forwarding it.

Malik was for decades an organizer of public housing tenants both there and in San Francisco and a recent Green Party candidate for New Orleans City Council, lives in the Algiers neighborhood, the only part of New Orleans that is not flooded. They have no power, but the water is still good and the phones work. Their neighborhood could be sheltering and feeding at least 40,000 refugees, he says, but they are allowed to help no one.

-----------------------------

New Orleans, Sept. 1, 2005 -

It's criminal. From what you're hearing, the people trapped in New Orleans are nothing but looters. We're told we should be more "neighborly." But nobody talked about being neighborly until after the people who could afford to leave had left.

If you ain't got no money in America, you're on your own. People were told to go to the Superdome, but they have no food, no water there. And before they could get in, people had to stand in line for 4-5 hours in the rain because everybody was being searched one by one at the entrance.

I can understand the chaos that happened after the tsunami, because they had no warning, but here there was plenty of warning. In the three days before the hurricane hit, we knew it was coming and everyone could have been evacuated.

We have Amtrak here that could have carried everybody out of town. There were enough school buses that could have evacuated 20,000 people easily, but they just let them be flooded. My son watched 40 buses go underwater - they just wouldn't move them, afraid they'd be stolen.

People who could afford to leave were so afraid someone would steal what they own that they just let it all be flooded. They could have let a family without a vehicle borrow their extra car, but instead they left it behind to be destroyed.

There are gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickup trucks, all of them armed, and any young Black they see who they figure doesn't belong in their community, they shoot him. I tell them, "Stop! You're going to start a riot."

When you see all the poor people with no place to go, feeling alone and helpless and angry, I say this is a consequence of HOPE VI. New Orleans took all the HUD money it could get to tear down public housing, and families and neighbors who'd relied on each other for generations were uprooted and torn apart.

Most of the people who are going through this now had already lost touch with the only community they'd ever known. Their community was torn down and they were scattered. They'd already lost their real homes, the only place where they knew everybody, and now the places they've been staying are destroyed.

But nobody cares. They're just lawless looters ... dangerous.

The hurricane hit at the end of the month, the time when poor people are most vulnerable. Food stamps don't buy enough but for about three weeks of the month, and by the end of the month everyone runs out. Now they have no way to get their food stamps or any money, so they just have to take what they can to survive.

Many people are getting sick and very weak. From the toxic water that people are walking through, little scratches and sores are turning into major wounds.

People whose homes and families were not destroyed went into the city right away with boats to bring the survivors out, but law enforcement told them they weren't needed. They are willing and able to rescue thousands, but they're not allowed to.

Every day countless volunteers are trying to help, but they're turned back.

My son and his family - his wife and kids, ages 1, 5 and 8 - were flooded out of their home when the levee broke. They had to swim out until they found an abandoned building with two rooms above water level.

There were 21 people in those two rooms for a day and a half. A guy in a boat who just said "I'm going to help regardless" rescued them and took them to Highway I-10 and dropped them there.

They sat on the freeway for about three hours, because someone said they'd be rescued and taken to the Superdome. Finally they just started walking, had to walk six and a half miles.

When they got to the Superdome, my son wasn't allowed in - I don't know why - so his wife and kids wouldn't go in. They kept walking, and they happened to run across a guy with a tow truck that they knew, and he gave them his own personal truck.

When they got here, they had no gas, so I had to punch a hole in my gas tank to give them some gas, and now I'm trapped. I'm getting around by bicycle.

People from Placquemine Parish were rescued on a ferry and dropped off on a dock near here. All day they were sitting on the dock in the hot sun with no food, no water. Many were in a daze; they've lost everything.

They were all sitting there surrounded by armed guards. We asked the guards could we bring them water and food. My mother and all the other church ladies were cooking for them, and we have plenty of good water.

But the guards said, "No. If you don't have enough water and food for everybody, you can't give anything." Finally the people were hauled off on school buses from other parishes.

You know Robert King Wilkerson (the only one of the Angola 3 political prisoners who's been released). He's been back in New Orleans working hard, organizing, helping people. Now nobody knows where he is. His house was destroyed. Knowing him, I think he's out trying to save lives, but I'm worried.

The people who could help are being shipped out. People who want to stay, who have the skills to save lives and rebuild are being forced to go to Houston.

It's not like New Orleans was caught off guard. This could have been prevented.

There's military right here in New Orleans, but for three days they weren't even mobilized. You'd think this was a Third World country.

I'm in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, the only part that isn't flooded. The water is good. Our parks and schools could easily hold 40,000 people, and they're not using any of it.

This is criminal. These people are dying for no other reason than the lack of organization.

Everything is needed, but we're still too disorganized. I'm asking people to go ahead and gather donations and relief supplies but to hold on to them for a few days until we have a way to put them to good use.

I'm challenging my party, the Green Party, to come down here and help us just as soon as things are a little more organized. The Republicans and Democrats didn't do anything to prevent this or plan for it and don't seem to care if everyone dies.

Malik's phone is working. He welcomes calls from old friends and anyone with questions or ideas for saving lives. To reach him, call the Bay View at (415) 671-0789

There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre.

In a week filled with dreadful scenes of desperation and anger from New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina some stories stood out.

But as time goes on many remain unsubstantiated and may yet prove to be apocryphal.
New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre.

And while many claim they happened, no witnesses, survivors or survivors' relatives have come forward.
Nor has the source for the story of the murdered babies, or indeed their bodies, been found. And while the floor of the convention centre toilets were indeed covered in excrement, the Guardian found no corpses.

During a week when communications were difficult, rumours have acquired a particular currency. They acquired through repetition the status of established facts.

One French journalist from the daily newspaper Liberation was given precise information that 1,200 people had drowned at Marion Abramson school on 5552 Read Boulevard. Nobody at the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the New Orleans police force has been able to verify that.

But then Fema could not confirm there were thousands of people at the convention centre until they were told by the press for the simple reason that they did not know.

"Katrina's winds have left behind an information vacuum. And that vacuum has been filled by rumour.
"There is nothing to correct wild reports that armed gangs have taken over the convention cen tre," wrote Associated Press writer, Allen Breed.

"You can report them but you at least have to say they are unsubstantiated and not pass them off as fact," said one Baltimore-based journalist.

"But nobody is doing that."
Either way these rumours have had an effect.
Reports of the complete degradation and violent criminals running rampant in the Superdome suggested a crisis that both hastened the relief effort and demonised those who were stranded.

By the end of last week the media in Baton Rouge reported that evacuees from New Orleans were carjacking and that guns and knives were being seized in local shelters where riots were erupting.

The local mayor responded accordingly.
"We do not want to inherit the looting and all the other foolishness that went on in New Orleans," Kip Holden was told the Baton Rouge Advocate.

"We do not want to inherit that breed that seeks to prey on other people."
The trouble, wrote Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune is that "scarcely any of it was true - the police confiscated a single knife from a refugee in one Baton Rouge shelter".

"There were no riots in Baton Rouge. There were no armed hordes."
Similarly when the first convoy of national guardsmen went into New Orleans approached the convention centre they were ordered to "lock and load".

But when they arrived they were confronted not by armed mobs but a nurse wearing a T-shirt that read "I love New Orleans".

"She ran down a broken escalator, then held her hands in the air when she saw the guns," wrote the LA Times.
"We have sick kids up here!" she shouted.
"We have dehydrated kids! One kid with sickle cell!"

I've just read that Bush is to lead an inquiry into how the Hurricane Katrina disaster was handled. Can we expect that the inquiry will find time to look into why Bush cut the millions of dollars needed to complete the New Orleans levee strengthening programme and why more than 30% of Louisiana's National Guard are currently in Iraq?

The frustration and anger of the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, is apparent in CNN's transcript of a radio interview from 2nd September below.

Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses'
Transcript of radio interview with New Orleans' Nagin

Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 11:49 a.m. EDT (15:49 GMT)

(CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow pace of federal and state relief efforts in an expletive-laced interview with local radio station WWL-AM.

The following is a transcript of WWL correspondent Garland Robinette's interview with Nagin on Thursday night. Robinette asked the mayor about his conversation with President Bush:

NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal resources and we're outmanned in just about every respect.

You know the reason why the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and you look down there and they're standing in there in water up to their freaking necks.

And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed.

WWL: Did you say to the president of the United States, "I need the military in here"?

NAGIN: I said, "I need everything."

Now, I will tell you this -- and I give the president some credit on this -- he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he's getting some stuff done.

They ought to give that guy -- if they don't want to give it to me, give him full authority to get the job done, and we can save some people.

WWL: What do you need right now to get control of this situation?

NAGIN: I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I'm like, "You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans."

That's -- they're thinking small, man. And this is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough, man. This is crazy.

I've got 15,000 to 20,000 people over at the convention center. It's bursting at the seams. The poor people in Plaquemines Parish. ... We don't have anything, and we're sharing with our brothers in Plaquemines Parish.

It's awful down here, man.

WWL: Do you believe that the president is seeing this, holding a news conference on it but can't do anything until [Louisiana Gov.] Kathleen Blanco requested him to do it? And do you know whether or not she has made that request?

NAGIN: I have no idea what they're doing. But I will tell you this: You know, God is looking down on all this, and if they are not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak.

You know what really upsets me, Garland? We told everybody the importance of the 17th Street Canal issue. We said, "Please, please take care of this. We don't care what you do. Figure it out."

WWL: Who'd you say that to?

NAGIN: Everybody: the governor, Homeland Security, FEMA. You name it, we said it.

And they allowed that pumping station next to Pumping Station 6 to go under water. Our sewage and water board people ... stayed there and endangered their lives.

And what happened when that pumping station went down, the water started flowing again in the city, and it starting getting to levels that probably killed more people.

In addition to that, we had water flowing through the pipes in the city. That's a power station over there.

So there's no water flowing anywhere on the east bank of Orleans Parish. So our critical water supply was destroyed because of lack of action.

WWL: Why couldn't they drop the 3,000-pound sandbags or the containers that they were talking about earlier? Was it an engineering feat that just couldn't be done?

NAGIN: They said it was some pulleys that they had to manufacture. But, you know, in a state of emergency, man, you are creative, you figure out ways to get stuff done.

Then they told me that they went overnight, and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them.

I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here.

WWL: If some of the public called and they're right, that there's a law that the president, that the federal government can't do anything without local or state requests, would you request martial law?

NAGIN: I've already called for martial law in the city of New Orleans. We did that a few days ago.

WWL: Did the governor do that, too?

NAGIN: I don't know. I don't think so.

But we called for martial law when we realized that the looting was getting out of control. And we redirected all of our police officers back to patrolling the streets. They were dead-tired from saving people, but they worked all night because we thought this thing was going to blow wide open last night. And so we redirected all of our resources, and we hold it under check.

I'm not sure if we can do that another night with the current resources.

And I am telling you right now: They're showing all these reports of people looting and doing all that weird stuff, and they are doing that, but people are desperate and they're trying to find food and water, the majority of them.

Now you got some knuckleheads out there, and they are taking advantage of this lawless -- this situation where, you know, we can't really control it, and they're doing some awful, awful things. But that's a small majority of the people. Most people are looking to try and survive.

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.

WWL: Well, you and I must be in the minority. Because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's going on to this point has been done as good as it can possibly be.

NAGIN: Really?

WWL: I know you don't feel that way.

NAGIN: Well, did the tsunami victims request? Did it go through a formal process to request?

You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important?

And I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over.

WWL: You and I will be in the funny place together.

NAGIN: But we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers lickety-quick to take care of New York and other places.

Now, you mean to tell me that a place where most of your oil is coming through, a place that is so unique when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up -- you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

You know, I'm not one of those drug addicts. I am thinking very clearly.

And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem. I don't know whether it's the president's problem, but somebody needs to get their ass on a plane and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now.

WWL: What can we do here?

NAGIN: Keep talking about it.

WWL: We'll do that. What else can we do?

NAGIN: Organize people to write letters and make calls to their congressmen, to the president, to the governor. Flood their doggone offices with requests to do something. This is ridiculous.

I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count.

Don't tell me 40,000 people are coming here. They're not here. It's too doggone late. Now get off your asses and do something, and let's fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.

WWL: I'll say it right now, you're the only politician that's called and called for arms like this. And if -- whatever it takes, the governor, president -- whatever law precedent it takes, whatever it takes, I bet that the people listening to you are on your side.

NAGIN: Well, I hope so, Garland. I am just -- I'm at the point now where it don't matter. People are dying. They don't have homes. They don't have jobs. The city of New Orleans will never be the same in this time.

In an unusually even-handed piece, I feel this article from this week's New Yorker puts everything well and in perspective....

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE 2005-09-12

IN THE RUINS
by Nicholas Lehmann

New Orleans is an affront to nature, and nature isnâ€™t shy about reminding New Orleans of it. Lots of other places are affronts to nature, too, but, if they are in the United States, they usually have the hermetically sealed feeling of high-rise beachfront condominiums and desert suburbs and houses perched on mountaintops. New Orleans is too scruffy ever to achieve that. Tendrils of vines poke up through the floorboards. Paint flakes, wood rots, stamps self-adhere, and chunks of concrete must fly out of the roadbeds in the middle of the night (how else could they have disappeared?). The air is wet and heavy enough to slice into chunks and carry out of town in shopping bags. Streams lose their coherence and turn into swamps. Rats and roaches and snakes sashay through the gutters Southern Louisiana is the site of many environmental depredations, but one of them will never be a feeling of locked-down sterility as an appurtenance of human habitation. Nature has the upper hand
Natural disasters are always lurking somewhere close to the front of the New Orleans mindâ€”especially aquatic disasters, and most especially hurricanes. Hurricanes are an eternal theme in the literature of New Orleans, for reasons having more to do with New Orleans than with literature. Lafcadio Hearnâ€™s story â€œChita,â€

An excellent site for current updates on the aftermath of Katrina is:
www.gumbopages.com/lookaThe site is run by Chuck Taggart, a New Orleanian, now resident in L.A. who has a weekly radio show similar to Charlie's. My partner met Chuck and I in Louisiana on one of Nancy Covay's tours around JazzFest time. I'm sure others who have been on the same tour will know Chuck.
The site today contains the hard-to-believe-but hope-its-true story that there will be a JazzFest in 2006, as near to New Orleans as they can make it, and assuming they can find somewhere to accomodate all the visitors.

There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years. Do not listen to anyone who says we can discuss all this later. No, we can't. Our country is in an immediate state of vulnerability. More hurricanes, wars, and other disasters are on the way, and a lazy bunch of self-satisfied lunatics are still running the show.

So, in the next few days, I will write to you about what must be done about Bush and Co.

But today I want you to join with me in bypassing the colossally inept and incompetent Bush administration and get help DIRECTLY to the people of the New Orleans area -- right now.

A lot of you have written me to ask what you can do. Many don't know who to trust. Many want to do more than write a check. You are right to think that writing checks to relief agencies will not get water and aid to people in the next 48 hours. Checks will be needed later and can be written later.

I have a way, though, for each and every one of us to do something today that can affect people's lives TODAY.

For the past few days I've been working with a group that, I guarantee you, will get direct aid to the people who need it most.

Cindy Sheehan, the brave woman who dared to challenge Mr. Bush at his summer home, has now sent her Camp Casey from in front of Bush's ranch to the outskirts of New Orleans. The Veterans for Peace have taken all the equipment and staff of volunteers and set up camp in Covington, Louisiana, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. They are accepting materials and personally distributing them to those in need.

This is where we come in. We need to ship supplies to them immediately. Today they need the following:

You can ship these items by following the instructions on VFPRoadTrips.org. Or you can deliver them there in person. The roads to Covington are open. Here's how to get there. You can drop them off or you can stay and participate (if you stay, you'll be camping so bring your own tent and gear and mosquito spray).

If you can't ship these items or go there in person, then go to VFPRoadTrips.org and make an immediate donation through PayPal. Camp Casey-Covington will have immediate access to this cash and can buy the items themselves from stores that are open in Louisiana (all donations to Veterans for Peace, are tax deductible).

Each day I will post up-to-the minute information as to what is needed and the progress Camp Casey is making. Please visit MichaelMoore.com often and do what you can to help.

Many other groups are also doing good work. MoveOn.org has set up a system for people to offer rooms in their homes to the survivors.

There is no time to waste. People are suffering and dying. Each of us can do something. There is no other alternative.

Thank you in advance for your help. Tomorrow, we will take care of the other work we need to do about the ideologically hamstrung incompetents in charge."

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the Walgreen's store at the corner of Royal and Iberville streets remained locked. The dairy display case was clearly visible through the widows. It was now 48 hours without electricity, running water, plumbing. The milk, yogurt, and cheeses were beginning to spoil in the 90-degree heat. The owners and managers had locked up the food, water, pampers, and prescriptions and fled the City.

Outside Walgreen's windows, residents and tourists grew increasingly thirsty and hungry. The much-promised federal, state and local aid never materialized and the windows at Walgreen's gave way to the looters. There was an alternative. The cops could have broken one small window and distributed the nuts, fruit juices, and bottle water in an organized and systematic manner. But they did not. Instead they spent hours playing cat and mouse, temporarily chasing away the looters.

We were finally airlifted out of New Orleans two days ago and arrived home yesterday (Saturday). We have yet to see any of the TV coverage or look at a newspaper. We are willing to guess that there were no video images or front-page pictures of European or affluent white tourists looting the Walgreen's in the French Quarter. We also suspect the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the Hurricane.

What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real heroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water. On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina.

Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them. We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money.

We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived at the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses.

As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no, they did not have extra water to give to us.

This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement". We walked to the police command center at Harrah's on Canal Street and were told the same thing, that we were on our own, and no they did not have water to give us. We now numbered several hundred. We held a mass meeting to decide a course of action. We agreed to camp outside the police command post. We would be plainly visible to the media and would constitute a highly visible embarrassment to the City officials.

The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowd cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched past the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge.

It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm. As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Our small group retreated back down Highway 90 to seek shelter from the rain under an overpass. We debated our options and in the end decided to build an encampment in the middle of the Ponchartrain Expressway on the center divide, between the O'Keefe and Tchoupitoulas exits. We reasoned we would be visible to everyone, we would have some security being on an elevated freeway and we could wait and watch for the arrival of the yet to be seen buses.

All day long, we saw other families, individuals and groups make the
same trip up the incline in an attempt to cross the bridge, only to be turned away. Some chased away with gunfire, others simply told no, others to be verbally berated and humiliated. Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the City on foot.

Meanwhile, the only two City shelters sank further into squalor and disrepair. The only way across the bridge was by vehicle. We saw workers stealing trucks, buses, moving vans, semi-trucks and any car that could be hotwired. All were packed with people trying to escape the misery New Orleans had become.

Our little encampment began to blossom. Someone stole a water delivery truck and brought it up to us. Let's hear it for looting! A mile or so down the freeway, an army truck lost a couple of pallets of C-rations on a tight turn. We ferried the food back to our camp in shopping carts.

Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered. We organized a clean up and hung
garbage bags from the rebar poles. We made beds from wood pallets and cardboard. We designated a storm drain as the bathroom and the kids built an elaborate enclosure for privacy out of plastic, broken umbrellas, and other scraps. We even organized a food recycling system where individuals could swap out parts of C-rations (applesauce for babies and candies for kids!).

This was a process we saw repeatedly in the aftermath of Katrina. When individuals had to fight to find food or water, it meant looking out or yourself only. You had to do whatever it took to find water for your kids or food for your parents. When these basic needs were met, people began to look out for each other, working together and constructing community.

If the relief organizations had saturated the City with food and water in the first 2 or 3 days, the desperation, the frustration and the ugliness would not have set in. Flush with the necessities, we offered food and water to passing families and individuals. Many decided to stay and join us. Our encampment grew to 80 or 90 people. From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City.

Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups. In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street.

We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies. The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

We arrived at the airport on the day a massive airlift had begun. The airport had become another Superdome. We 8 were caught in a press of humanity as flights were delayed for several hours while George Bush landed briefly at the airport for a photo op.

After being evacuated on a coast guard cargo plane, we arrived in San Antonio, Texas. There the humiliation and dehumanization of the official relief effort continued. We were placed on buses and driven to a large field where we were forced to sit for hours and hours. Some of the buses did not have air-conditioners. In the dark, hundreds of us were forced to share two filthy overflowing porta-potties. Those who managed to make it out with any possessions (often a few belongings in tattered plastic bags) were subjected to two different dog-sniffing searches. Most of us had not eaten all day because our C-rations had been confiscated at the airport because the rations set off the metal detectors. Yet, no food had been provided to the men, women, children, elderly, disabled as they sat for hours waiting to be "medically screened" to make sure we were not carrying any communicable diseases.

This official treatment was in sharp contrast to the warm, heart-felt reception given to us by the ordinary Texans. We saw one airline worker give her shoes to someone who was barefoot. Strangers on the street offered us money and toiletries with words of welcome. Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

I wonder if the guest who posted this report could attribute their source? I would very much like to distribute it further but, as a matter of principle, will only pass on reports that have a source. As much as I agree with the contents I prefer to pass on known facts rather than information that might later be shown to be fiction.

There's a big campaign starting to roll to re-assert some credibility for Bush & co. and their actions in this sorry affair. Tony Bliar is quoted as being angry at the BBC's reporting of the flood and their apparent criticisms of the administration. I didn't see any tv footage as I was out the country, so can't comment on this. But when Bliar and Murdoch start criticising the BBC, my instinctive support goes to the BBC.

Bradshaw & Slonsky are paramedics from San Francisco. I think it was also published by Socialist Worker which seems to be reason enough for a lot of people to disbelieve it. I think it has the ring of truth but what do I know?

We are now making concerted efforts to raise funds to help the New Orleans Musicians in exile. I have set up a separate bank account and will be able to transfer funds with minimum costs.
We are running a fundraising dance on September 27th with ALL funds raised going to the NOMC ( see below for info and flyer).
Please come along and make the evening a success, and if you can't come PLEASE send a donation instead.
As this event is at short notice we would appreciate it if you could forward this email to anyone in your address book who may be interested, including journalists etc who could help.
We are also looking for volunteers to run the door, the bar and help with transport. Please contact me as soon as possible if you can help.
Cressida Bell

The New Orleans' Musicians Clinic (NOMC) was founded in 1998 it had a
simple mission: To sustain New Orleans musicians in mind, body and soul.
(www.wwoz.org/clinic)

Now the very soul of New Orleans' music culture is in jeopardy. But a cadre of
dedicated music lovers is doing all it can to keep the music alive.

On September 7, 150 New Orleans musicians came together in Grant Street, a famed music club in Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country, 2.5 hours from New Orleans. The club's proprietor opened her heart to the displaced musicians and to the newly arrived staff of the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. The NOMC Administration pledged to protect and serve the musicians of New Orleans, vowing to continue the clinic's work. Other local club owners put together a roster of clubs adding gigs, so the musicians could begin performing again.

The Jazz Foundation of America has secured instruments for the musicians and a warehouse in Lafayette has been found to store them.
Other groups are seeking laptops, CD players, and gift certificates for clothing.

Johann Bultman, Chairman of the NOMC stayed behind in New Orleans. He plans to return to the NOMC clinic as soon as the streets are passable to retrieve vital records and to begin rebuilding the clinic. He is insuring that all donations will be appropriately processed, acknowledged, and spent effectively. The NOMC's formula for aid: For every $1 raised, the clinic provides $12 worth of services.

Displaced in Natchez, Mississippi Outreach Chair Bethany Bultman is conducting fundraising and serving as liaison with NOMC staff in Lafayette. â€œDonations are vital to our culture in exile and then to rebuild the homes of musicians who sustain our souls!â€

filmed and directed on location by ruhi hamid
THE HURRICANE THAT SHOOK AMERICA

Testimony from emergency workers, government employees and residents of New Orleans about the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Many officials knew the cityâ€™s flood defences would not withstand the storm.

Alongside many other unflattering things, George Bushâ€™s statement that he â€œdidnâ€™t think anyone anticipated the breach of the leveesâ€

'We all gonna have a good time' -
John Harris,
Guardian, Friday 19 November 2005

Outside Johnny White's Hole in the Wall, one of the few Bourbon Street establishments that caters to a crowd of local regulars, a busker is plying his trade using a Fender Stratocaster and a box-sized amp. Charlie Harrison is a fortysomething roofer from Florida, here to play his part in the city's slow reconstruction. Most nights, he comes down to the Quarter to sing a two-chord, blues- inspired song that reflects the sole conversational topic at the bar. "She broke up the levee/She bled all the rain," he sings. "She blended the rivers with Lake Pontchartrain." His chorus is an example of hilarious understatement: "When Katrina, came up to New Orleans/Well, Katrina came up and made a scene."

The water may have gone, but 10 minutes' drive from here, the impression is of a city laid waste. In neighbourhoods like Gentilly, Treme and the Lower Ninth Ward, the broken-up houses are empty, the streets are piled with mangled wreckage - which, on close inspection, is made up of the heartbreaking remains of suddenly interrupted lives - and the only recurrent signs of life are the crews of workers, replete with face-masks, who spend every day making incremental progress on the clean-up operation. The daily newspaper, Times Picayune, is full of stories that compound the sense of a crisis without end: freshly-returned families rendered homeless by skyrocketing rents, others vowing never to come back. Politicians and city officials seem paralysed by one of Katrina's more paradoxical legacies: the people won't return unless they have jobs; the jobs won't come back in the absence of the people.

Against stacked odds, however, one aspect of New Orleans life is being kept alive. Quite apart from the low hubbub emanating from the Quarter, it's some token of this city's resolute attachment to its music that the weekend I arrive sees the ceremonial re-opening of one of its most famous clubs, along with a huge outdoor festival. The spirit underlying such events, moreover, is not the kind of crass boosterism you see in the billboards that line the highway into town, streaked with slogans like "Let's make New Orleans even better." It comes, in large part, from the musicians themselves.

"I lost everything in the flood," one of them tells me. "But I tell you, it felt great to come back. This is home. This is where I was born and raised. And this is where the spirits are."

Mac Rebennack, aka Dr John, would surely agree. The day I speak to him on the phone, the 64-year-old - who, in the words of one account of his music, "has immeasurably advanced the language of New Orleans music, tapping dark myths of the past in a repertoire that won him international fame" - is on tour in Brazil, set to return to the USA the next weekend for a concert in Memphis, and about to release a fundraising mini-album, Sippiana Hericane. The 20 minutes we spend talking are full of sighing words about Katrina and its aftermath ("There was just a lack of caring about people, all the way, from top to bottom"), and warm recollections of New Orleans's musicality.

"Oh, I knew that right from when I was a baby," he says. "Besides the fact that my father sold records for a living, you couldn't walk around in the neighbourhood without hearing pianos, and good people playin' 'em too. Everywhere you went, you were surrounded by music. There was so much of it, it was kind of intimidating at first. There was just too many good players around."

He speaks in a sleepy drawl, infused with the same lyrical quality you hear in his records, only rising in pitch when presented with one question: given that most of the pianos had gone quiet and that the rhythm and blues on which he cut his teeth had passed from fashion, did pre-Katrina New Orleans still possess what had once made it so special? "Now, listen," he says, managing his own version of gentle indignation. "Whether you're talking about the Mardi Gras, or the music in church, or anything else, that's still there. You got the spirit of the place, and the way that whatever comes into the city gets turned into a different type of thing. You know, in the days of the New Orleans- Havana boat, you got those Cuban influences coming through. And they joined up with the jazz and blues that was already there. Everything just overlaps. That's part of the nature of New Orleans."

He's right, of course: though the tawdrier aspects of Bourbon Street may have clouded New Orleans's image with frat-boy high jinks and pub-rock pastiche, its modern musical history testified to the persistence of what made the place unique. The wider world may not have been paying much attention, but in the work of latter-day musicians like Kermit Ruffins, the Rebirth Brass Band, Coolbone and the Soul Rebels, you could hear New Orleans's musical gastronomy working anew; this time, jazz tradition being mixed with ingredients that included the loose, swaggering brio of hip-hop. The city's abiding spirit, moreover, continued to attract droves of musicians, drawn to the qualities so wonderfully crystallised in Bob Dylan's autobiography Chronicles. New Orleans, he writes, "is one very long poem ... A great place to live vicariously ... Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it." Consider the Deep South's geography, and such attributes seem faintly miraculous: how, sitting under the pious weight of the Bible belt, did New Orleans manage to embody all that addictive mystery and abandon?

New Orleans's supposed heritage, meanwhile, still lived and breathed. A particularly celebrated example lay inside an unremarkable building in the threadbare mid-city area, facing the towering Orleans parish prison, and built in close proximity to a bail bonds office. The Lion's Den was the nightclub co-owned by Irma Thomas, long known as the Soul Queen of New Orleans, whose gorgeously aching voice has graced records - among them, the definitive version of Time Is on My Side, quickly pilfered by the Rolling Stones - since the early 1960s. When her schedule allowed it, she performed at the club on weekends; its place as a local institution was proved by mentions in nearly every New Orleans guidebook.

Now, however, the Lion's Den is a semi-derelict wreck, and Thomas is newly resident in Gonzales, a sleepy country town an hour north of her old home in the city. Her new house is a freshly-built bungalow, sprinkled with the few possessions she has so far salvaged from the flood; on the porch, two crinkled photo albums sit drying in the sun. Inside, there isn't much besides a box-fresh three-piece suite and flat-screen television, and a handful of toys belonging to her two-year-old grandson, Isaiah. "Ladies like shopping," she says, ruefully. "But when you're starting over, it's tough."

Thomas, along with her husband and six-piece band, was en route to a show in Austin, Texas, when Katrina began her assault. Unable to come back, she played a second gig, before she awoke the next morning to a miserable revelation. "We woke up and saw it on TV: a roadsign near where we lived, and the water was just underneath the tip of it," she says. "I turned to my husband and said, 'We don't have a home any more.'" Though she's set on reclaiming her house, the Lion's Den is apparently beyond hope. "I've been back and seen it," she says. "And it's a mess: dank, dirty, smelly and full of mould. That building will probably be torn down."

Her opinion of New Orleans's musical prospects, by contrast, is that little bit more optimistic. "New Orleans has a uniqueness that no other city has," she says, "and that's part of all us. We need to get back, and when we do, in terms of its musical atmosphere, New Orleans will start to return to what it was. But it'll take a while, because the poor were such a big part of that city. They were the ones who made so much of that great music." She pauses, and cracks a knowing smile. "You had your white collars and your blue collars - but you also had your dirty collars. And that's where soul and groove and all that came from."

A perfect case in point, until his death in 2001, was provided by one of New Orleans most gloriously eccentric sons: Ernie K-Doe (ne Kador), the R&B singer whose self-propagated myth was founded on his progress from birth at the city's Charity Hospital to life as "the Emperor of the World". His one undeniable contribution to history was the 1960 hit Mother-in-Law, a joyously infectious hymn to domestic discord that became the first New Orleans-produced single to top the American charts. In K-Doe's estimation, his immortality was thus assured: "There are two songs that will stand the test of time," he was fond of claiming. "One is The Star Spangled Banner. The other is Mother-in-Law."

When he died, his funeral drew 5,000 mourners, the New Orleans authorities named July 12, Ernie K-Doe day - and his widow, Antoinette, continued to hold court at the Mother-in-Law Lounge, a gaudily-decorated club-cum-venue on Claiborne Avenue, in one of the city's most low-lying enclaves. The day we meet, she's just returned from the latest instalment of a post-Katrina odyssey that's taken her to Georgia, Massachusetts and North Carolina - from where she returned home in a newly purchased hearse. "It was inside my budget," she explains, "and it's something nobody wants to steal. Besides, I can carry Ernie's statue in it."

As the flood waters poured into the Lounge, the statue - a life-sized effigy of K-Doe, dressed in his dazzling pomp - was the first item she moved into her upstairs apartment. It's still there, along with the supplies (tinned beef, Pringles, bottled water) that took Antoinette and a handful of friends and relatives through seven nightmarish days, before they were hauled out by the National Guard. The Lounge, where the water eventually reached the bar, is full of the noxious stench of the flood, and encircled by the dull stain of the waterline; much of the memorabilia and photography that covered the walls is now beyond repair.

"This is not my first storm," she says. "And if I didn't leave 40 years ago after Hurricane Betsy came, I'm not leaving now. My husband's remains are here, and so are my mom's. I feel like if I abandoned New Orleans, and came back three or four years from now to celebrate Ernie K-Doe day, I wouldn't have no right to do it, because I'd have abandoned the city when it was down."

Among those whose lives are bound up with New Orleans music, such statements are a regular refrain, resolutely expressed in terms of an almost moral duty. As things stand, however, some of the city's most celebrated alumni remain scattered. The Neville Brothers, the much-admired family whose work stretches from old-school R&B to trailblazing 1970s funk and beyond, are temporarily resident in Nashville and Austin. The aforementioned Kermit Ruffins is in Houston. Having been reported dead and then transported to Baton Rouge and Dallas, Fats Domino has apparently made it to a New Orleans hotel, while his house - a pastel-painted building in the flood-blitzed Lower Ninth Ward, still featuring the graffito "RIP Fats - you will be missed", sits empty, chewed-up and thus far untouched. On one of her trips back to the city, Antoinette K-Doe drove her new car down there to assist with the relief effort; much to her horror, the presence of a hearse was briefly taken as proof that Domino really had breathed his last.

For those musicians who have managed to come back, the challenges of rebuilding lives have been joined by another vexing task: attempting simply to make music again. "The main thing that I hear from my friends is that they're focused on just trying to re-establish a scene down here," says Reggie Scanlan, the bass player with the Radiators, whose variegated fusion of almost all the city's genres goes under the banner of "Fish Head music". "And right now, that's on a pretty basic level. It means just being somewhere and playing."

With so many possessions washed away, new instruments are a necessity - which is where the Tipitina's Foundation comes in. Based above the venue of the same name, the 1,000-capacity crucible of New Orleans music founded in 1977 and named after a song by the R&B pioneer Professor Longhair, it's run by a 34-year-old native of Philadelphia named Bill Taylor. In Katrina's immediate aftermath, he first busied himself finding accommodation, all over the US, for displaced musicians. After that, he set about arranging out-of-town gigs for them. Now, he's in the midst of applying for assistance grants from scores of other arts foundations, and supplying freshly-returned musicians with donated equipment, most of it stored in a barn in North Carolina. "Right now," he explains, "the culture of New Orleans is in exile. The main issue for us is, how do we get people back and keep that culture alive? It can't survive if it's fragmented all over the country."

The morning we meet, he's in the company of Monk Boudreaux, a long-standing pillar of a New Orleans subculture that embodies the mixture of music, good times and beguiling mysticism that lies at the heart of the New Orleans myth. Boudreaux is a Mardi Gras Indian: one of scores of New Orleanians, organised into local "tribes", whose performances - best seen during the celebrations from which they take their name and the Italian Catholic festival of St Joseph's day - represent local black traditions mixing with a showy approximation of Native American ritual. In their centuries-old mixture of percussion and call-and-response singing, you can hear the rhythms that still inform New Orleans music. Mardi Gras Indians have joined sporadically with funk and R&B musicians to create records that sound like distillations of the city's celebratory spirit .

Boudreaux returned to New Orleans only yesterday. "There was a lot of rumours saying I was dead; that I'd drowned," he says. "People still probably think I'm dead. So now I'm going to get contacting everybody." He spent the aftermath of Katrina in the outskirts of Dallas, briefly returning to New Orleans to rescue his costume - a riot of beads and feathers, altered and augmented each year. "Some of it's gone, but I saved most of it," he says. "I put it up real high. The firemen told me that the water was going to go up to 5ft, so I put it on top of the closet. And I came back here three weeks ago to get it. There's beadwork on there that's 50 years old. I didn't want to lose that."

Just about all his other possessions have been lost, though Boudreaux is at pains to sound improbably upbeat. "The spirits are here," he explains. "It's a hard thing to explain, because it's within you. It comes out in your music. But put it this way: I just didn't feel right in Texas." He is, moreover, keenly anticipating a reunion with his tribe, the Golden Eagles. "When we do our thing now," he says, "the music's gonna get gritty, because when we all get together, we're gonna be so happy to see each other that we're just gonna roll it out."

My last day in New Orleans is split between scenes of miserable desolation, and two events that crystallise the same mood of unlikely resilience. In the afternoon, I drive around some of the city's most blighted areas in the company of Ben Sandmel, a local drummer and music historian making his first lengthy trip home after a spell in nearby Lafayette, shocked anew by the devastation Katrina left behind. That night, we make our way to the Voodoo Music Experience, an annual outdoor event staged this year as a thank you to the thousands of relief workers, police and military personnel who have been here since September. On the main stage, a handful of visiting attractions - the Bravery, Queens of the Stone Age - crank out their politely received indie-rock, while in a smaller corner of the field, a run of New Orleans musicians manage, notwithstanding the Microsoft hoarding slung under the stage and the availability of nothing stronger than watery beer, to just about hint at the spirit that the organisers have attempted to sum up in the event's mission statement: "Restore, Rebuild."

The real thing arrives four hours later, when we make our way to the ceremonial re-opening of Tipitina's, packed with a crowd split 50/50 between black and white, and vibrating to the music delivered by a locally-renowned troupe called Big Sam's Funky Nation. Their final song is a rendition of Jim Hendrix's Purple Haze, which duly progresses - as tends to happen here - into a loose-ended, high-spirited jam, punctuated by an ad-libbed hookline: "We gon' have a good time/We all gon' have a good time."

Six months ago, it would have seemed innocuous, just another joyous exhortation bouncing around a city where they were yelled in their thousands. Set against the horrors that have recently happened here, it could easily seem ludicrously trite. Hollered by freshly returned musicians, and shouted back by hundreds of New Orleanians, it sounds positively defiant.